Category: Better Business
Relationship between internal IT teams and MSPs evolves rapidly
A survey of 1,000 senior IT leaders conducted by TEKsystems finds that more than a third (35 percent) plan to increase spending on IT outsourcing in 2018, a six-point increase over 2017. Nearly half (47 percent) also reported that spending on...
Co-seller models find increased appeal in the age of the cloud
The way IT vendors have historically sold products and services has revolved primarily around models where a channel partner either resold the product after acquiring it from the vendor or acted as an agent on behalf of the vendor. But,...
Mike J Douglass: How to improve your productivity while running a busy MSP
A lot of MSPs start out the same — launched by techies that want to create a service offering they can control and develop. This often means the MSP owner is spending most of their time working IN the business and...
Stop doing these 7 manual network management tasks
Active network infrastructure management is a key element of any managed service offering. Traditionally, network management has involved a lot of tedious manual work, making it expensive and very hard to scale. And that’s why many MSPs have shied away...
Awareness of GDPR rights builds slowly in the EU
The first major issue many IT organizations will confront in the new year is the need to comply with the General Data Protection Rule (GDPR) that goes into effect in the European Union (EU) in 142 days. Scheduled to go into...
Spiceworks report finds IT labor costs likely to rise in 2018
The single biggest expense when it comes to managing IT is IT labor costs. So, when the salaries of IT professionals start to increase it has positive and negative implications for managed service providers. A 2018 IT Career Outlook survey...
Why MSPs need to create a business plan template to achieve success
Over the past five years I have coached more than 1,000 MSPs on how to increase recurring revenue and profitability. In every case, the business owner wanted their future results to be dramatically different than their current situation. This means...
SLAs are key to expanding available market for managed services
Over the years the size of the available market for managed services has stubbornly remained less than 25 percent of the total IT market. The reason for this is two-fold. There are a large number of organizations that don’t view...
How IT labor trends impact delivery of managed services
The day after Labor Day in the U.S. seems like an appropriate moment for managed service providers to take stock of how IT labor trends and the cost of IT labor is impacting their business. A new U.S. Salary Report...
You, your customers, and GDPR
With less than 12 months to go until GDPR is enforceable, it is time to start looking at your customers, which services they subscribe to, and where you can help plug the gaps. Begin speaking with your direct contacts within...
